Waiting For You
by empressdreamer
Summary: Susan tries to commit suicide after losing her family, but something made her strong again. Prequel to 'Waiting For Me', or is it the other way around?
1. Foreword

**First things first. I want to apologize. I know I shouldn't do another story before finishing one first. But I've got a reviews saying I need to explain so and so, and before I start with Susan telling her son about the ivory horn, I feel I simply must do 'Waiting For You' first, so people will understand it better.**

**This story is actually my original idea- 'Waiting For Me' was the sequel of this story, but I don't know why I started that first.**

**For those who had read and reviewed 'Waiting For Me'- thank you for your support and criticism! I'll do my best to finish both 'Waiting For You' and 'Waiting For Me'. If you have any ideas or suggestions, it would be most welcome.**

**I look forward to reviews for 'Waiting For You'! Please R&R, thank you!**


	2. We Just Want You Back

"Are you sure you don't want to come with us, Susan?"

Susan Pevensie was sitting at her vanity table in her room, and from the mirror she could see her siblings' reflection. Peter was leaning by the window, Lucy sitting on her bed and Edmund on the floor. Susan generally never allowed her siblings to come into her room, but that day she had relented. Peter had just come home from the Military Academy, looking tanned and strapping as an officer should look. Edmund had returned from the university, having started his end-of-year examinations. The moment her brothers had came through the front door and met Lucy, Susan saw that their faces were grave and serious. She didn't understand at first, but then they started talking about going to the countryside, to old Professor Kirke's house.

Susan sighed and started doing her hair. She no longer felt at ease whenever she went to the Professor's house, although once upon a time she used to spend nearly six months there. It wouldn't do for her to go. She probably would just sit there tensely until all her muscles are weary.

When she didn't reply, Peter pressed on. "You really ought to come, Su. Everyone will be there, and we'd like you to be there with us."

Susan rolled her eyes impatiently. "I'm really sorry Peter, but I promised Jennifer James I'd go to her party. I can't possibly back out now."

Edmund gave a derisive snort. Susan caught Peter giving their little brother a warning look.

"Can't you skip the party just this once, Su?" Lucy chipped in pleadingly. "This is really important-"

"Of course I can't, Lucy. That would be very rude of me", said Susan. The truth is, she could back out anytime she wanted. But Jennifer James is a very popular girl in Susan's class, and to be invited to her party is something everyone would die for. She smiled when she thought of Micheal Emmerson, the handsomest guy in college. She's planning to knock him dead with her gorgeous new outfit tonight.

"But-but- this is very important", said Lucy quickly. "The professor said there's something going on in Narnia and he's got a bad feeling about it and-"

"Really, isn't it time you get over this Narnia business?"

She was growing very tired of her brothers and sister going on about this 'Narnia'. She had hoped that Peter, now training to become an army officer and mixing with no-nonsense people, will finally came to his sense and became an adult. Even Lucy was far too old for it, but then, Susan had given up hope that Lucy will ever grow up.

The reactions to her simple words were so familiar she can almost predict it. Edmund's jaw snapped together and he looked at Susan as a predator would its prey. Lucy's eyes began to fill with dismay. And Peter, well, Peter simply shuts his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Susan, don't you remember it at all?"

"There's nothing to remember, it never happened", she said dismissively, for the umpteenth time. Why can't Lucy see that?

Lucy burst into tears. Edmund stood up, his face scarlet with rage. In a flash Peter strode forward and placed a hand upon his shoulder. "Don't, Ed", he said, only loud enough for Susan to hear.

Edmund rounded on Peter. "She's being horrible about Narnia _and_ making Lucy cry, and you still don't want me to tell her off?" he said incredulously.

"Oh Su-Susan, h-how could you?" It was Lucy who spoke before Peter could respond. "It h-has happened, y-you know it has! We f-found Narnia through the Professor's w-wardrobe and we met Mr. T-Tumnus and the B-Beavers, and we f-fought the W-White Witch and th-then Aslan made us Kings and Q-Queens of Narnia!" It was a miracle how she can even get two words out with the amount of sobbing she was making.

"That's enough, Lucy", said Susan patronizingly. "You're just making those silly little games we used to play a lot bigger than it really is."

"I am not!" shouted Lucy. "Narnia is real, I remember it. I remember everything!"

"You've blocked it from yourself Susan", said Edmund, his voice shaking with suppressed anger as Peter pulled Lucy into his arms and comforted her. "I'm not surprised. You wanted to much the be the sensible one, don't you? That's why you no longer believe in Narnia, in Aslan. You only see what your eyes wanted to see, that's why you were the last to see Aslan that night when we were trying to save Caspian. You saw him ever later than Trumpkin did!"

Susan had had enough. She was tired of this. She had never been able to have a civilized conversation with Peter, Edmund or Lucy for a long time now. She spun around and faced her siblings, her eyes darting sharply from the sobbing Lucy, to the crestfallen Peter, to the very angry Edmund. "What in heaven's name are you talking about? What is this fascination all of you have with those old games? Why do you keep reliving them? I mean, they're nice and fun and lovely while it lasts, but they were make believe!"

"You called Narnia a silly little game?" yelled Edmund. "Look at yourself, with all your stupid makeup and clothes and parties. Who's really the silly one here?"

"Ed!" cried Peter in alarm. Even Lucy stopped crying and stared at the blazing face of her second brother.

It was all Susan could do to stop herself from slapping Edmund. Instead she rose from her chair and went to open her door. "Get out, all of you!" she screamed, her face scarlet with fury. "I'm sick of all of you, treating me like a baby when it's you who never grew up! And forget about having me coming along anywhere! I never want to see any of you again!"

It was her siblings' stricken face that told Susan she had gone too far. But it was too late to go back now. Edmund thundered out of the room, followed by a grievous Lucy, who stopped at the door to look at her sister, but Susan looked away from her. Finally Peter remained, and when Susan looked up at the older brother whom she respected so much, she found that she couldn't yell at him.

"Susan", said Peter softly. "Edmund didn't mean to yell at you."

"I don't want to talk about it", Susan snapped.

"We miss you", Peter went on as though he didn't hear her. "You've drifted so far from us."

"I've always been here, Peter", Susan replied, although she knew the last part was true. "But I can't seem to understand anyone anymore, not Edmund, not Lucy, not even you. You're nearly twenty two years old, and yet you're still believing things that don't exist. And Ed, he's supposed to be the scholar, the one with all the logical answers, but he's still thinking about being a King and fighting evil Witches…"

"Su…", at this Peter stopped, and he looked at her with the look she loathed so much. It was a look of disappointment, as though she had failed him in some way. It was the look of pity, as though she didn't reach something the others had. Peter had that look reserved for her since she got home from America, after he had gotten over the shocked-and-distressed alternative. But Susan decided to have none of it this time. No, she will show her older brother that she was no longer a child. That it was not she who needs to wake up, but them.

"Go Peter", she told him in the gentlest tone she can muster. "Tell the Professor and everyone else I said hello. And I hope you'll think of what I've said."

Peter looked at his sister long and hard, and after realizing that she would go to another frill and fancy event rather than stay with her family, he shook his head and moved to the door. When they drew level, separated merely by Susan's bedroom door, Peter stopped and looked at his sister's powdered, defiant face.

"Our sister was everything you are now and more, Su", he told her sadly. "We just want her back."

With that, he was gone.


	3. Loss

**TWO: LOSS**

Dead. They are all dead.

Susan's brain was numb when she heard this. It was as though a switch had been turned off for her, and her whole world lay in darkness. She didn't even have the strength to cry, not when the police officer came to her door to sympathetically explain to her what had happen, not when she had gone to the hospital to identify her family members, not even during their funeral. No, there wasn't a teardrop she had to shed, only weakness and pain that seemed beyond grief.

She didn't organize the funeral, although she should have, being the only Pevensie left. She didn't have the strength for it. Instead it was her Uncle Harold who arranged the whole service. Her Aunt Alberta, once the dominant one in the House of Scrubb, crashed to the floor when she saw Eustace's mangled body. Her darling son, the beacon of her life, was dead too. It was Uncle Harold who pulled himself together, and made sure the funeral was done accordingly.

Susan only went to the funeral with emptiness in her heart. She staggered through the graveyard blindly, the whole service seemed like a blur to her. She couldn't look at the seven coffins before her- her mother's, Father's, Peter's, Edmund's, Lucy's and Eustace's. She merely stood in a distance, staring unseeingly as the eulogy was spoken. She received many condolences and sympathies from friends and relatives, but she never fully listened to what they said. After the service she returned home, and shut herself up in the dark, meaningless space.

She didn't know how long she had been sitting there, on the roof of her house. She didn't even know how she managed to get up there. It has been years since she last climbed a tree or the rooftop. It was something Peter or Ed or even Lu would do, not her. Not Susan. Susan would be sitting in the room, with a book in her hands and her hips tucked primly together. Or else she would be in the kitchen making the best blueberry pie the family had ever tasted. Susan would be out and about, having boys courting her every other night and cards and flowers showering her front door on Valentine's Day.

What good is all of that now?

Her family's gone, and she was all alone.

Susan shut her eyes, wishing the pain would go away. But when she closed her eyes, images of her family appeared in her mind, and that hurt even more. She couldn't forget the way things used to be, and the treatment she had given to her siblings before they left her. A thought flew across her mind, as she struggled over Edmund's furious face and Lucy's tearful eyes and Peter's disappointed expression.

If she had agreed to come with them, she would have died with them too….

Susan heard whisperings in her head, and somehow they made sense. The aching feeling within her cried out for her family. She didn't want to stay here. She didn't want to be alone. What was the point of being here, when all she had loved and cared about is gone? She rose to her feet and stared up to the velvety dark sky. Her eyes then fell to the ground. From where she stood, it looked rather far. But height was not her present concern at the moment. There was something in her mind which she felt she must do, and she had forgotten the fear of heights she used to have. There was a new kind of fear welling in her now, and she wanted it to go away from her.

Susan stretched her hands up to her side, her face pointing to the sky and her eyes closed. She felt the wind blowing around her, the cool night air touching her face gently. Her mind felt odd- so cloudy and blank and yet so clear. This is the best solution she could ever come up with, and she will do it no matter what.

The whole world seemed meaningless without her parents, without her protective older brother or fiery younger brother or her sweet little sister. There seemed to be no point of living now, not when she kept hearing Lucy's merry laughter and Edmund's pattering steps and Peter's humming voice all over the house. The lonely space was driving her to the edge, and the fond memories she had of her brothers and sister were killing her. Somewhere in a distant place was her family. Somehow she knew they were happy there, wherever they are. And if they won't take her there with them, she will go to them herself.

Susan let herself fall, hoping and praying that when she reached the hard, cruel ground, she will finally see her family welcoming her home.


End file.
